by Jan Carson
First published 2022
In the summer of 1993, a mysterious virus begins killing children in a small Northern Irish community. Hannah, an eleven-year-old survivor, watches her classmates die one by one while her evangelical community wrestles with inexplicable loss. As parents grieve and local authorities struggle to understand the outbreak, Hannah discovers she might be the key to unraveling why some children perish and others survive. The virus defies medical explanation, moving with an almost supernatural selectivity through the tightly-knit Protestant village. Each death fractures the community's fragile social fabric, revealing deep-seated tensions between faith, science, and the incomprehensible nature of random tragedy. Carson crafts a razor-sharp exploration of collective grief and individual resilience in the face of an apocalyptic threat.
Genres: fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, apocalyptic
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, mystery, small-town
Setting: Northern Ireland, Protestant Village
Period: 1993
400 pages · Paperback · Doubleday Ireland
Content warnings: child-death, medical-trauma